Just some other interesting stuff going on around the world:
For instance, the locust plagues in the Middle-East and the Horn of Africa seem to be getting worse. Gizmodo reported on Monday of this week that:
While covid-19 is a growing concern in East Africa, the locusts have been an ongoing crisis for months. A swarm that covers a square kilometer of land can eat the same amount of food in a single day as 35,000 people. The Horn of Africa—which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, the Sudan and Uganda—is already one of the world’s most food-insecure regions. More than 40 percent of the population are undernourished, and in Eritrea and Somalia, that rises to 70 percent. Right now, a new generation of locusts are taking flight, interrupting farmers’ planting season. And the next generation of locusts are expected to form swarms just as crops are ready to be harvested.And an excerpt from a Reuters report also published on March 30:
The residents of Botor village painted a bleak picture.Meanwhile, in Nigeria, there is a debate whether there was a meteor impact near the city of Akure. The Guardian notes that an "asteroid called 2012 XA133 was set to pass Earth on Thursday, March 26 [March 27 in Nigeria]," and a few hours after it passed by, "a loud noise that shook the whole town was heard in Akure, destroying some buildings located in the Eleyowo community in the town. Eleyowo located a kilometre away from the Akure airport, saw a large number of buildings including churches and a school affected by the explosion." Government officials say that the explosion, which left a large crater besides destroying and damaging buildings, was from a truck carrying explosives that exploded. But Adepelumi Adekunle, a professor of geophysics and earthquake engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, claims it was, in fact, a meteor impact.
They spoke of how the sky had turned dark when the giant, black cloud of locusts swept into their dusty hamlet, and began feasting on their fields of maize and millet.
Villagers burned rubbish and banged on pots and pans to chase the insects away, but to no avail. By the time the swarm departed the following day, 60% of Botor's crops had been eaten.
It wasn't hard to believe. A swarm of a square kilometre contains 40-80 million locusts and can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people, according to the FAO.
"Only Allah will have the power to save us if it happens again," said Abdi Shakur Muhammed, chief of Botor village, as he sat on a plastic mat under the shade of a tree.
It was not until next day that I understood what he meant.
Setting off just before sunrise from our hotel in the town of Borama, near the border with Ethiopia, we drove for hours along pot-holed roads and through dried river beds, past groups of nomads with their herds of camels, in search of the locusts.
Finally, in a dense patch of scrub, they came into sight.
Fluttering in a pink-tinged cloud of thousands, the swarm of locusts admittedly didn't look as ominous as I had expected.
"Don't be fooled," said Mohamed Mohamoud, director of Somaliland's plant protection department, pouncing on an adolescent locust and holding it up between his fingers.
"These locusts are the second generation - their population is 20 times larger than the previous. There are countless swarms like these across east Africa. Once they become adults and take flight, the destruction they can do is unimaginable."
As I wandered across the scrub and through the swarm, I examined how the tiny leaves on the bushes had already been eaten by the insects. Some bushes had been stripped clean.
For communities in this part of Somaliland, still reeling from a drought in 2018 which starved to death more than 70% of their animals, there may be little escape from the devastation which looms ahead.
Those of us in the northern hemisphere may be up for a treat in May when the green comet, Atlas, is expected to become visible to the naked eye. Oh, and a large asteroid is expected to pass close by the Earth on April 29. The Oklahoman reports:
The first cosmic guest comes calling on April 29 when asteroid 1998 OR2 passes by. The size of a small city, and therefore quite destructive should it ever strike Earth, it was discovered on July 24, 1998, by the now-defunct Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program, funded by NASA and operated jointly through several major U.S. observatories.The article also mentions that on April 7, the Moon will be its closest to Earth for the whole year and should, therefore, be the brightest full moon of the year. [Update (4/17/2020): The comet has broken up and is dimming, so there won't be a show].
NASA classifies 1998 OR2 a “potentially hazardous asteroid.” To receive that designation, an asteroid must be at least 500 feet across and pass within 4,650,000 miles of Earth. While an asteroid at that distance poses absolutely no threat to Earth, its orbit could be altered by gravitational tugs from other planets or moons in our solar system so that, on a future orbit, it might pass much closer to Earth or even impact our planet.
The closest approach of 1998 OR2 occurs at 4:56 a.m. on April 29. At that time, it will still be 3.9 million miles away, or 16 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. Even with its relatively close proximity, it won’t be visible to the naked eye. But if you have a telescope and a clear, dark sky you can spot it. Go to https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/asteroid-52768-1998-or2-april-2020-how-to-see#tips for tips and charts to locate it.
Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS may become a spectacular sight in our night sky in late May. It was discovered on Dec. 28 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS, hence the name), another NASA-funded program, operated by the University of Hawaii. As astronomers tracked it after the discovery, the comet brightened at an unprecedented rate. While astronomers expect that rate of brightening to slow down, if it were it continue to brighten as it has been, it will rival a crescent moon in our night sky.
One major hurdle exists before the comet can bloom into a bright, beautiful sight in our night sky. The comet will pass closer to the sun than Mercury. Bright comets passing close to the sun often break into pieces or even disintegrate altogether. But if it survives that close pass, it could become the brightest comet since Comet Hale-Bopp, which passed by in 1997.
And what would this post be if I didn't at least include one story about "wars and rumors of war." William Gensert, writing at American Thinker, argues that "China Is Preparing to Start a War with America." He explains:
China appears to be laying the groundwork for a "justified" attack on the United States, perhaps in the South China Sea or perhaps elsewhere. It will be a military attack, not an act of terrorism, and the excuse will be America's deliberate transmission of COVID-19 in Wuhan.David Goldman has argued for years that the double whammy of an aging population and stagnating economies will push a country to war, although he was focusing on Iran rather than China. For naysayers that contend that China's economic ties are too great for them to risk a war, I would remind you that Germany's greatest trading partner when World War I broke out was Britain.
When the Chinese became accusatory, it's telling that they didn't blame the CIA, always the usual suspect. No, they blamed it on American soldiers.
American military deliberately infecting China is an act of war worthy of a military response.
In October, the 2019 World Military Games were held in Wuhan. Chinese media triumphantly trumpeted the Americans winning just eight medals, while China won 239. It was then that we supposedly infected Wuhan citizens with the "American virus."
China is now defenestrating foreign media, sending home reporters from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post at just the opportune moment. No nation wants journalists around when it is planning a sneak attack.
And with its economy ravaged by Trump's trade war and the virus shutdown, and now back at full production, while America's economy is in total shutdown and in the grip of an active pandemic, there will never be a better time to attack.
Here in America, the Democrats along with corporate media eagerly buy China's lies surrounding the nascence of the worldwide pandemic, the propaganda blaming America, the stories of Chinese benevolence, and the efficiency of Chinese methods in getting control of the virus at home. They are actively supporting China's version of the truth. China has every reason to believe they will continue to do so.
When or if China attacks, the left (the Dems, Antifa, and BLM) will flood the streets with anti-war protesters designed to stop America from responding to China's attacks. After all, don't we deserve it? We elected Trump, didn't we?
China claims there are no new infections when there is ample evidence that that claim is a lie. But the Chinese know that by the time people understand, it will be too late. They will have struck, and any new cases will be used to bolster their casus belli. Those Chinese who perish in the interim of silence will have died for the fatherland.
Conservative media have been neither as naïve nor as malicious as their mainstream brethren, often writing that China's behavior, with the denials and accusations, is merely a clumsy and foolish attempt to convince the world.
I don't see it this way. I think China is doing this to convince its own citizens more than anyone else. The Chinese communists can survive the world's condemnations, especially if they defeat America, but they live and die by controlling their own population. When they attack an American naval ship in the South China Sea, they won't need to worry about the support of their own nation because they will have convinced the people that America started the war and a peaceful and beneficent China was reluctantly, and only as a last resort, defending itself.
China is facing a demographic time bomb and has ten years to rewrite the facts on the ground. It is facing a quandary of epic proportions. It won't be long before it has the oldest population on the planet. Those people will be old before they are rich.
China's business model is existentially flawed. It has extraordinary debt that is multiples of its GDP, having grown exponentially through government funding of empty cities, military buildup, high-speed rail to nowhere, a Belt and Road initiative that's becoming obvious to partner countries as a means of colonialist extortion, and various other nonproductive government lending to CCP members. Its vaunted reserves will soon disappear.
China is also a nation, thanks to the "one child" initiative, that has hundreds of millions of young men with no prospect of marriage. Hundreds of millions of "incel" men make for either an angry and expendable fighting force or a bane upon society.
China is on the clock. Today, it is formidable, with a sophisticated and capable military. The Chinese may be able to win a confrontation, even a war, with the United States. Under Obama's policy of surrender, China had a chance of overtaking us economically while growing its military until its primacy was a fait accompli. But Trump killed that dream with his trade war, exposing the inherent weaknesses of the Chinese economy. And should the aftermath of the pandemic play out without interference, China's position in the world will be irreparably damaged.
What does China have to lose?
Time is not on China's side. Unless the Chinese destroy us on the field of battle soon, the clock will run out, and the dream of the coming "Chinese century" will be just that: a dream.
It is interesting to me that the Wuhan virus is no worse than other major pandemics we've experienced over the last century or so. But the panic over it is unprecedented, as is the shutting down of whole economies. And this is probably just a warming up for what will come in the next 10 to 20 years. While the Idaho earthquake earlier this week was the strongest in the region for decades, I am reminded that the 20th Century (and, so far, the 21st) have been geologically quiescent compared to the 19th Century. What if we had volcanic explosions comparable to Tambora or Krakatoa? Or a repeat of the New Madrid earthquake?
No comments:
Post a Comment